Pacific Manuscripts Bureau Newsletter Room 4201, Coombs Building (9) Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200 Australia Ph: (612) 6125 2521; Fax: (612) 6125 0198; Email: [email protected] http://rspas.anu.edu.au/pambu/ Series 5, No. 15 November 2002 Contents News from Canberra p.1 Western Pacific High Commission Archives Arrive in Auckland p.3 Comment on GEIC Archives by Richard Overy p.4 Reverend J. Graham Miller’s Vanuatu Files p.5 Pacific Islands Archives at the South Australian Museum p.6 Bud Watkins’ Papuan Patrol Reports p.7 AusAid Library and AusAid Project Reports p.7 NLA Digitising Pictorial Material in the Hurley and Spencer Collections p.8 Fr Philip Gibbs SVD, Archives Projects at the Melanesian Institute, Goroka, PNG p.8 Susan Cochrane’s Contemporary Pacific Art Archives p.9 New Guide to Pacific National Archives and Records Laws p.9 The Fiji Oral History Project p.10 Recent PMB Microfilm Titles p.12 News from Canberra The papers of Dorothy Crozier, the first Western Pacific archivist, which were The shipment of the archives of the Western transferred to the Bureau last year have been Pacific High Commission (WPHC) from London arranged and parts of them are now available on to Auckland is a major event in the history of PMB microfilm. The Crozier papers included Pacific archives administration. Heather papers of Shirley Baker, the first Premier of Yasamee, the Manager of the British Foreign Tonga, and his daughter Beatrice. Mrs Sioana and Commonwealth Office Historical Records Faupula was appointed as a Visiting Fellow at Department transferred the archives to Stephen the Bureau to identify the Baker papers many of Innes, the Special Collections Librarian at the which are in Tongan. Lists of both record groups University of Auckland, in an official ceremony are available from the Bureau. on 9 October. Acquisition of the WPHC archives marks the University of Auckland’s New Zealand The Bureau has been systematically and Pacific Collection, which already has a fine microfilming the correspondence, 1892-1919, of collection of Pacific islands official publications, J T Arundel & Co, the Pacific Islands Co Ltd and as one of the strongest Pacific research the Pacific Phosphate Co Ltd — the resource centres outside of Hawai’i. Official predecessor companies of the British Phosphate reports on the transfer are included in this issue Commissioners. This is a joint project being of Pambu. The Bureau was very pleased to undertaken with the National Archives of receive a visit from Heather Yasamee on her Australia which holds the original records in way back to London from Auckland. Melbourne. The records document trading Pambu, November 2002 operations and the early years of the guano councils in Fiji, Vanuatu, PNG, Solomon Islands, trade. Professor Barrie Macdonald commented Tonga and Samoa. A complementary set of that he would put the PIC material along side the reports on Pacific trade unions, 1981-1997, early Burns Philp reports, like those by Frederick gathered by Alan Matheson, International Officer Wallin on the Gilbert, Ellice and Marshall Groups with the Australian Council of Trade Unions, has (see Buckley and Klugman, South Pacific also been microfilmed by the Bureau. Focus), as being of general interest and not just The PMB Management Committee met in relevant to the firm itself. The Bureau is now Auckland in February and again in Canberra in about half-way through the project having September. Among other things the possibility of microfilmed the companies’ London and an increase in PMB subscriptions was Australian Office correspondence to 1909. The discussed without resolution at both meetings. next stage will focus on correspondence from As the rate of subscription has not been the companies’ agents in Nauru and Ocean adjusted for ten years, the Bureau is now Island (Banaba). dependent on sales of microfilm to meet its The Bureau has just completed arrangement recurrent costs. The matter will be discussed of a second batch of Joan Herlihy’s collection of again at the Management Committee meeting to reports and related documents on the Solomon be held in Apia next month. Islands. The reports, dating from 1945 till the A model Nauruan canoe was presented to early 1980s, document many aspects of the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau in the late 1960s Solomon Islands economic and political by the heirs of the late Mrs Dorothea Garsia, development including employment, agriculture, who died in Canberra in May 1968. Mrs Garsia shipping and other transport, communications, was the widow of Commander Rupert C. Garsia, cooperatives and trade unions, but they focus on Administrator of Nauru from 1933 to 1938. constitutional development at all levels of Commander Garsia died in 1954. national, provincial and local government. As far as is known, the Nauruans have not Professor Hank Nelson has lent the Bureau a made canoes of the type modelled since before nice set of United Nations Trusteeship Council World War II. However, examples of this type Reports of Visiting Missions to Trust Territories are to be found in the Horniman Museum, in the Pacific, mainly New Guinea, 1950-1971, London, and the Museum of Völkerkunde, which the Bureau has microfilmed. Hamburg. Pamela Swadling arranged with Ottmar The model had become dilapidated over the Maier for his Chimbu stone-tool data-sheets to years while on display in the Coombs Building. be microfilmed by the Bureau. In the period Dorothy McIntosh, the Administrator in the 1958-63 Mr Maier, who was a lay missionary Division of Pacific and Asian History, sent the builder with the Divine Word Mission, collected canoe to the University of Canberra’s 234 stone tools in the Chimbu Province Conservation of Cultural Materials Program for documenting them in detail, including restoration. A student, Stacey Hargraves, photographs of the stone implements and the cleaned decades of dust from the pandanus sail, people who sold/gave them to Mr Maier. The wove patches for it, mended the rigging, raised collection was eventually sold to the Städtische the mast, and lashed the outrigger and boom Museum für Völkerkunde in Frankfurt. Robin which had come adrift. It took many hours of Hide commented that the datasheets are a nice pains-taking work under the supervision of her window on the process of artefact collection by a lecturer, Beata Tworek-Matuszkiewicz. The lay missionary at that time (and why the Chimbu result is a wonderfully restored Nauruan canoe were so willing to dispose of them). which will find an honourable place in the The South Pacific and Oceanic Council of Coombs Building, properly protected in a glass Trade Unions (SPOCTU) held its inaugural conference in Suva in 1990. A wing of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, Asia-Pacific Regional Organisation, SPOCTU operated out of Brisbane, holding biennial conferences and many training sessions in the Pacific islands till it was wound- up in 1999. With the help of the PMB, the SPOCTU records were transferred to the Noel Butlin Archives Centre at the ANU. The Bureau has now begun microfilming parts of the SPOCTU archives focusing on steering committee and conference minutes and related papers and files on its affiliated trade union peak 2 Pambu, November 2002 case. University of Hawaii in comprehensiveness, and together provide a draw card for researchers. The prospect of the transfer of the Western Pacific Archive has already sparked a lot of The Conservation of Cultural Materials interest among researchers, both in New Program is less likely to sail onward. The Zealand and abroad. University of Canberra has withdrawn support for the course on the grounds that it is too The transfer is the result of several years of expensive. Unfortunately there are no other negotiation, review and physical preparation, specialist courses for cultural materials including substantial conservation work, by the conservators in Australia. If the Program does UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The fold the long-term effect on heritage materials in Foreign and Commonwealth Office has recently Australia will be devastating. published a commemorative history of the archive, tracing the origins and development of Ewan Maidment the Western Pacific High Commission and reproducing a selection of documents. PMB ExecutiveNauruan canoe Officer model. Photograph by Jude NovemberShanahan 2002 "Much of the value of an archive lies in the --------------------------------------------------- use that can be made of it," says Heather Yasamee from the Foreign and Commonwealth Western Pacific High Commission Office, who will present the archive to the University. Archives Arrive in Auckland "The Foreign and Commonwealth Office's University of Auckland press release, 10 Oct 2002. transfer of the Western Pacific Archive and associated collections to The University of Three container loads of Western Pacific history Auckland is designed to make this historic were returned to the region on 9 October when archive more readily available for researchers in the British Government formally transferred its the region to use and enjoy." unique and extensive Western Pacific Archive to "By returning this archive to the Pacific the University of Auckland. region, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is The Western Pacific Archive captures a returning part of the region's history." century's worth of the life and times of the Western Pacific Islanders through unique At 600 linear metres, most of the archive will records, photographs, maps and other be housed in a commercial storage facility, but memorabilia covering the period 1877-1978. The access to the materials will be provided in the collection is of great importance because of the Special Collections reading room, part of the light it sheds on indigenous communities and University's General Library refurbishment. colonial policy over a long period. It is an In 1976, Bruce T.